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BLOOMINGTON — There was this student sitting behind us on press row, a fan I affectionately call The Guy Who Knows Everything About Basketball, and he was offering a running commentary on Indiana’s unattractive but important 56-46 victory over Illinois on Sunday.

God, Hollowell can’t play a lick. I hate that guy!

Why can’t we get the ball in to Vonleh? GET THE BALL IN TO VONLEH!!

We’re a turnover machine. Make better decisions, dang it!

(For the record, he didn’t say “dang it.’’)

Welcome to Indiana basketball 2013-14, a season on the brink of an NCAA tournament berth or irrelevancy, a season when the Hoosiers have shown they can beat anybody (Wisconsin) and can lose to anybody (Northwestern).

The good old days of Vic, Cody, Jordan and Christian are long gone, and what’s left is a ridiculously young team (three freshman starters) that will make the Hoosier Nation crazy as it attempts to master this confounding game. Some nights, they look as if they’ve turned a corner. Other nights, they slam into the median. It’s frustrating and perplexing, and it’s exactly what most of us expected during this rebuilding year.

At the very least, though, there’s hope.

There’s hope in the form of Yogi Ferrell, who controlled Sunday’s game (17 points, five assists) and continues to be IU’s best player.

There’s hope in the form of Noah Vonleh, who had a huge impact on the game despite scoring just four points. He also had 14 rebounds and defended the rim like a skinny Roy Hibbert.

There’s hope in the form of Stanford Robinson, the hard-charging freshman who played a season-high 29 minutes and continued to go to the basket like a very young Victor Oladipo. (Now he’s got to learn to dunk with his right hand; his embarrassing end-of-game dunk attempt hit the bottom of the rim and left him looking sheepish.)

“To me, the guy who stood out was Robinson,’’ Illinois coach John Groce said. “The improvement he’s made from game one against us to game two in just a month was very noticeable. … I think he’s really getting better very, very quickly.’’

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So what’s it going to take for IU to make the big tournament, besides a bunch of wins?

“The main thing is cutting down on turnovers,’’ Yogi Ferrell said. “We want to get 10 or less. I feel like that will come with playing a lot of games. Us being young isn’t a factor at all. It just comes down to us being patient.

“We’ve got to have more of a defensive mindset. We can’t have miscommunications on defense like we did a few times in this game.

“I think we get those two things down, we’ll be OK.’’

Said IU coach Tom Crean: “We have to get better at making decisions; there’s no question about that. We’ve got to continue to play through those ruts in a game when it’s not going right for the individual or they’re taking things away. We’ve got to continue to get the pace of the game to a place which is best for us, because sometimes the lane is getting so packed in right now and there’s so much attention being paid to Noah and Yogi. … And then defensively, can we keep building the concept of keeping the dribble in front of us? Because if we can keep the dribble in front of us, now we can zone, now we can press, now we can switch, all those different things.’’

On Sunday, they won the kind of game they had to win and have to continue to win if they hope to have a chance to earn an NCAA tournament spot. By my calculations, the Hoosiers (13-7, 3-4 in the Big Ten) need to finish this conference season 7-4, 10-8 overall, which is not completely beyond comprehension. The schedule gets a bit cushy down the stretch, with two games against Nebraska, a visit to Northwestern, a game at Purdue, and some winnable home games against Michigan, Penn State and Iowa.

But there’s little margin for error.

Check that: There’s NO margin for error.

Sunday’s game wasn’t a tour de force, but then, Indiana isn’t going to win a lot of beautiful games in the last 11 of the Big Ten season. This team isn’t built for that, at least not just yet. They will have to do the little things that helped them get past the Illini.

They controlled the boards 42-28 and allowed just four offensive rebounds and zero second-chance points against a good rebounding team.

After a sloppy first half, they cut down on the turnovers that have hurt them so badly this season.

They got to the free throw line consistently, hitting 13-of-19.

And they played terrific defense, often while playing a 2-3 zone, limiting Illinois to 46 points and just 33 percent shooting.

Fans understandably wanted a team that would earn an NCAA tournament spot, but this group will have to grow into that. It’s not a tournament team now, but it has a chance, however faint, of enjoying a late-season renaissance and making some noise in February and March.

All of which might cause The Guy Who Knows Everything About Basketball to pipe down.

Ah, probably not.

Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or email bob.kravitz@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter: @BKravitz.